The question: What could be the use of taking
seriously a scenario of the collapse of global climate and
civilization, even near term extinction? Especially the views that
argue that it's already too late or that changes could help, but
probably won't be made. The answer: By responding fully to the
scenario, we can meanwhile live more intensely and organize the
elemen......

The more liberal the model of moral education in a given school,
the more likely it is to emphasize social service rather than the
acquisition of individual character virtues. Nevertheless, the
theoretical underpinnings of that aspect of character education are
largely absent or unacknowledged, and such programs of social
service continue to appear within a discourse of the training of
individual moral character and will in the virtues. Historically,
social s......

Beginning in the 1960s, the American quest for moral education
embraced three new "liberal" approaches. "Values clarification"
taught children how to judge diverse situations. "Cognitive
development" taught children how to think about values. "Feminist
caring" considered values as part of personal relationships rather
than as abstract principles. These liberal approaches were still
based largely on the free choices......

In 1600s and 1700s America, the family was the main transmitter
of moral values, embodied in religion. In particular, Puritans
believed that religion expressed God's will, which individuals
should will themselves to obey. In the 1800s, economic development
increased personal freedom. To manage that freedom, moral educators
taught individuals to further control the self and disciple the
will. The early 1900s brought still greater modernity, prompting
co......

In the late 1900s, conservatives announced that America was in
moral decline and blamed morally permissive liberal education.
America's schools focused on modern technical skills and neglected
traditional religious values. The conservatives' remedy was
"character education": teaching school children an array of
individual "virtues." People should be able to identify the
ethically correct action ......

To understand how American moral education is being conducted in
the early 2000s, author Ravven visited various American
institutions. At a public elementary school, she listened to a
principal and a parent express their enthusiasm for educating
children about interpersonal "virtues." There she also observed a
kindergarten and second grade, finding the students more alienated
than enthusiastic. Ravven also observed efforts of companies to
teach......

By now, the SIZE of American government is roughly fixed. Over
the next few decades, Americans will debate its counter-productive
COMPLEXITY. America has chosen to govern itself through more
indirect and incoherent policy mechanisms than can be found in any
comparable country. Today much of American public policy resembles
what computer geeks call a "kludge": "an ill-assorted collection of
parts assembled to fulfill a particular purpose...a clu......

By now, the SIZE of American government is roughly fixed. Over
the next few decades, Americans will debate its counter-productive
COMPLEXITY. America has chosen to govern itself through more
indirect and incoherent policy mechanisms than can be found in any
comparable country. Today much of American public policy resembles
what computer geeks call a "kludge": "an ill-assorted collection of
parts assembled to fulfill a particular purpose...a clu......

By now, the SIZE of American government is roughly fixed. Over
the next few decades, Americans will debate its COMPLEXITY. America
has chosen to govern itself through more indirect and incoherent
policy mechanisms than can be found in any comparable country.
Today much of American public policy resembles what computer geeks
call a "kludge": "an ill-assorted collection of parts assembled to
fulfill a particular purpose...a clumsy but temporarily......

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韦爱德Edwin A. Winckler (韦爱德) is an American political scientist (Harvard BA, MA, and PhD) who has taught mostly in the sociology departments at Columbia and Harvard. He has been researching China for a half century, publishing books about Taiwan’s political economy (Sharpe, 1988), China’s post-Mao reforms (Rienner, 1999), and China’s population policy (Stanford, 2005, with Susan Greenhalgh). Recently he has begun also explaining American politics to Chinese. So the purpose of this Blog is to call attention to the best American media commentary on current American politics and to relate that to the best recent American academic scholarship on American politics. Winckler’s long-term institutional base remains the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University in New York City. However he and his research have now retreated to picturesque rural Central New York.